Verdict in Saddam trial due to be handed down - Africa & Middle East - International Herald Tribune

BAGHDAD — Nearly three years after he was captured by U.S. troops, Saddam Hussein faces the possibility of the death penalty on Sunday when verdicts are handed down by the Iraqi court that has been trying the former Iraqi ruler and eight others for the brutal repression of a Shiite town north of Baghdad in the 1980s.

The Iraqi Defense Ministry, bracing for possible violence, announced on Friday that it has canceled all military leave and placed the country's forces on heightened alert ahead of the verdicts on Saddam and eight other defendants. "Leave has been canceled and we are on alert for any possible emergency," said Major General Ibrahim Shaker, a spokesman for the ministry.

If the court imposes death sentences on Saddam and other defendants, including his half-brother, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Iraqi law provides that the sentences will be carried out by hanging. But because an appeal to the nine-judge appellate chamber of the trial court is automatic in the case of death sentences, a delay of several months, and possibly as much as a year, is likely before the hangings are carried out, according to Iraqi and U.S. officials close to the case.

The five-judge panel that heard 10 months of testimony in the case confirmed Friday through a spokesman that it expected to go ahead and announce the verdict as scheduled on Sunday.

Saddam, who is 69, demanded at the trial that he be shot by firing squad if convicted, which he said was his right since he was the commander-in-chief of the Iraqi armed forces at the time of the events in the Shiite town of Dujail.

His chief defense counsel, Khalil al- Dulaimi, reached by telephone in the Jordanian capital, Amman, on Friday, said Saddam told him in a meeting last week at Camp Cropper, a U.S. military detention center near the Baghdad airport where he has been held during the trial, that he expected the death sentence and was not afraid.

Instead, Dulaimi said, it was President George W. Bush and U.S. troops in Iraq who should be concerned at the prospect of a death sentence for the former ruler. "The verdict will be a political one, in accordance with the instructions of the American Hitler," meaning Bush, Dulaimi said.

He added: "When the verdict is announced, the doors of hell will open in Iraq, the sectarian divide in the country will deepen, and many more coffins will be sent back to America. And the disaster will not be limited to Iraq. The entire Middle East will be consumed, and hatreds will be sown between Americans and Arabs that will last for generations."

U.S. reports 7 troops killed

The Iraqi armed forces were ordered on high alert Friday ahead of the verdict in the Saddam trial, Agence France- Presse reported from Baghdad.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

As Iraq stepped up security, the U.S. military said Friday that seven of its troops had been killed since Wednesday and that the bodies of 23 murdered Iraqis had been found in Baghdad over the previous 24 hours.

Four U.S. Marines died from wounds sustained due to enemy action Thursday in Anbar Province in western Iraq, a military statement said.

Three other soldiers were killed Thursday in a bomb attack in Baghdad and one soldier died in a non-combat situation on Wednesday.

A U.S. military spokeswoman said that 23 corpses had been found in Baghdad since Thursday, apparently the latest victims of a campaign of sectarian violence by rival death squads.

Meanwhile, the U.S. national intelligence director, John Negroponte, met with the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, and "renewed the support of the U.S. administration and President George W. Bush for the Iraqi government," the Iraqi leader's office said.

They also "discussed the need for the Iraqi armed forces to have enough numbers and equipment to take charge of the security portfolio," it said.

Also on Friday, a Greek woman human rights activist was rescued by Iraqi police, three days after she was kidnapped in Baghdad, an Interior Ministry spokesman said. Brigadier General Abdul Karim Khalaf said that the woman, whose identity he did not disclose, was freed Friday and "handed over to the Greek Embassy in Baghdad."

Elsewhere, U.S. forces killed 13 suspected Qaeda militants near Mahmudiya, a short distance south of Baghdad, the military said.